I do remember Stuart and Lisa’s emphasis on getting quality exclusives, and Lisa’s sage advice that a press release was just the start of a story, not the story itself. I’ve never forgotten that. There had to be a reason to read MCV, and the editorial team really worked hard to get stories you weren’t going to read anywhere else. I think that helped distinguish ourselves from CTW when we started and made MCV a ‘must read’. George Kotsiofides, MCV 1998-2001
Stu and Lisa were brilliant managers. They cajoled, they advised, and they taught, but the main mission was to beat CTW. We wanted the best stories, the best interviews. Just to be the best. And we were really good. Stu landed good interviews and stories for the cover, and Lisa was a force of nature who everyone loved. George and I were writing the meat and potatoes news, but we all knew our roles and we all knew why we were doing it. The day we beat them in circulation still sits with me. It meant so much to everyone. Steve Merrett, MCV 2000-2001
We were fucking good at what we did. We were not like games websites or games publications. We saw the national media as our competitors and we were consistently breaking stories, week after week. And there’s nothing better than putting a magazine to press. It’s an amazing, amazing feeling. And if you’re a news-led publication and you’ve been able to break big stories that have an impact around the world, and on things like share prices and stuff like that, it’s incredible. Lisa Carter, MCV & Develop 1998-2015
We worked really hard to become the industry’s leading weekly trade mag, the ‘must read’ and we worked twice as hard to stay leading and then we bought CTW and became giant killers. I later left MCV to immigrate to Canada, and was out of the industry for 18 months. It
was the most miserable 18 months of my life. I wanted to re-join MCV, but there was no position available, which is when I joined
GI.biz. It was brilliant to be back in the industry. Chris Buckley, MCV & Develop 2000-2008
There was a perception with MCV that essentially you paid for coverage. Now, that wasn’t strictly true, because there were people such as myself that would beat the editorial drum. I would always be arguing for stuff on its editorial merit, but there certainly was a reality underpinning that- that if a company was financially supporting us for advertising, they would get coverage. I know that people within the industry funded referred to that as the ‘MCV tax’. Ben Parfitt, MCV & Develop 2005-2016
MCV got the first ever interview with Andrew House when he became president of PlayStation. Not the Financial Times. Not IGN. MCV; It had this strange power for a UK retail magazine. It was super successful and everyone was working at full capacity. Everyone was so devoted and loved it. Christopher Dring, MCV 2007-2016
One story that I worked on was when there were PlayStation 2 shortages in the run up to Christmas. This was across Europe, and Sony had used some Russian cargo planes to transport a load of stock over, so we ran the story and we had the designer mock up a Russian transporter with a PlayStation logo on the side. The Sony boss rang me the next day to say he was in trouble with the Russian air force and could I write an email to say it was us and not Sony that was behind it. It all panned out in the end. I think. Lisa Carter, MCV & Develop 1998-2015
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